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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Sep 15, 2025
Life is too serious to be taken seriously.
Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared.
[A]ny notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment.
... there hasn't been a serious life-style trend since the couch potato was sighted, in about 1986, on one of its rare forays to the video store. Cocooning remains a significant mass enterprise, encouraged by the availability of five hundred new cable channels and microwavable popcorn.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Various kinds of self-forgetting, usually accompanied by illusions and myths, make it possible to live without the intransigent facing of death-in the sense of always thinking about it and what it means for life and the things dear in life-which is characteristic of a serious life.
A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear.
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Don't take life too seriously.
Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.
People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
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